Latest news with #Chernow
Mint
18-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Mint
Mark Twain was a literary celebrity with a moral compass
Mark Twain. By Ron Chernow. Penguin Press; 1,200 pages; $45. Allen Lane; £40 THE OCTAGONAL study overlooks the green of Elmira College in upstate New York. In it, Mark Twain wrote 'Adventures of Huckleberry Finn", 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", 'A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court", along with umpteen other stories, articles and speeches. Twain spent his most productive summers on his wife's family's farm in Elmira, writing by day and reading his work to his wife and children on the porch in the evening. The unusual shape notwithstanding, the study is small, austere and unremarkable—three words that are in every way the opposite of Twain's life. In fact, argues Ron Chernow in a titanic new biography, Twain was 'the largest literary personality that America has produced". He is the first literary figure to receive the Chernow treatment: in the past the Pulitzer-prizewinning biographer has focused on tycoons (John D. Rockefeller), presidents (George Washington) and treasury secretaries (Alexander Hamilton, a book which, improbably, inspired Lin-Manuel Miranda's hit musical). Mr Chernow argues that Twain 'fairly invented our celebrity culture". It is true that Twain's biting wit, along with his oratorical and self-promotional skills, made him a star, as beloved by the crowds who packed into halls to watch him speak as by presidents and the literati. But that is not why generations of American children read him in school, nor why he still deserves to be read today. What he really invented was a way of being American in the world and on the page: bold, irreverent and unpretentious. Twain was the laureate of America's unruly adolescence. Born Samuel Langhorne Clemens on November 30th 1835, Twain grew up in Hannibal, Missouri. His father was anxious, stern and, as Mr Chernow notes, 'forbiddingly humourless"; his mother was pious and quick-witted. Like Abraham Lincoln, Twain was a product of the American frontier. What he lacked in formal education he made up for in ambition. Hannibal sits on the banks of the Mississippi river, which, in the pre-railroad days, was perhaps America's most important commercial artery. The river gave the author his name: the cry 'mark twain" from a boatman meant that the river was of safely navigable depth. To him the river represented liberty and a connection to the wider world. In his most famous novel, 'Adventures of Huckleberry Finn", Huck (the narrator) and Jim (his enslaved companion) were free and relatively equal on the water, but harassed by the law and a host of unsavoury characters on land. Twain's upbringing put him in close contact with black Americans. The Missouri of Twain's youth was a slave state. His father owned and rented people. His mother took a dim view of abolitionism. Yet as a boy Twain enjoyed listening to people telling stories in the 'negro quarter" of his uncle's farm. He became an ardent opponent not just of slavery, but of racial discrimination in almost any form. In his writings he railed against the vile bigotry common in his day and supported women's suffrage long before it was popular. William Dean Howells, Twain's editor at the Atlantic, called him 'the most desouthernised southerner I ever met. No man more perfectly sensed and more entirely abhorred slavery." That abhorrence comes through clearly in 'Huckleberry Finn", from which Ernest Hemingway claimed 'all modern American literature comes". Twain quipped in a preface to the novel that 'Persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot." Both moral and plot are evident in the book. In its celebration of vernacular speech, sympathy with the underdog and lack of pretence, the book created a uniquely American style of fiction. Jim was Twain's most radical creation. Readers today might be put off by his stereotypical dialect, superstition and devotion to Huck, but he was perhaps the first nuanced black character written by a white novelist. Jim is thoughtful and decent, possessed of all the compassion that Huck's own father, an abusive drunkard, never provided, Mr Chernow argues. Once a mainstay of school curricula, in recent years 'Huckleberry Finn" has fallen out of favour. The book is 'banned from most American secondary schools", Mr Chernow writes, 'and its repetitive use of the n-word has cast a shadow over Twain's reputation." But readers who see past the use of that ugly word (common in Twain's time) will find a work that—in its panoply of cruel southern whites blind to Jim's intellect and manifest virtues—shows how bigotry not only harms its victims, but also deforms the people who spout it. Huck yes Mr Chernow devotes curiously little space to the novel. Instead, his biography spends a great deal of its 1,200 pages on topics such as the young Twain's hair-care habits, his opinion on street cleaning in the city of Buffalo and his disappointments later in life. By around page 700 even the most devoted Twainiac may wish the book had a more vigorous editor. Still, Mr Chernow's doorstopper is worth reading for its portrait of an author sure of himself and his gifts, even as he toiled as a steamboat pilot or printer's devil, and its insight into the frenetic, violent, optimistic country that made him. For more on the latest books, films, TV shows, albums and controversies, sign up to Plot Twist, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter
Epoch Times
14-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Epoch Times
A Masterful, Absorbing Biography of the Great American Author
Samuel Clemens, known primarily as Mark Twain, is arguably America's greatest and most influential writer. He was a man of letters and original thought, and those thoughts were often controversial, whether on an intimate or public level. Twain was indeed an American original, and, his originality could have only spawned from having grown up in the South along the Mississippi River during the middle of the 19th century. All of his grandeur, as well as flaws, are captured in Ron Chernow's new biography, 'Mark Twain.' In this biography, Chernow proves once again why he is today's preeminent single-volume biographer in the United States. The author, over the decades, has chosen only the most famous of American subjects, such as George Washington, Ulysses S. Grant, Alexander Hamilton, John D. Rockefeller, and J.P. Morgan. Of course, one could argue, what exactly is Chernow saying that hasn't already been said about these people? What is he presenting that we aren't already well-versed about?
Japan Today
04-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Japan Today
Musical 'Hamilton' and historian Ron Chernow to receive Liberty Medal awards
Renee Elise Goldsberry, from left, Lin-Manuel Miranda, and Christopher Jackson perform a medley from "Hamilton" during the 78th Tony Awards on Sunday, June 8, 2025, at Radio City Music Hall in New York. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP) The Broadway musical 'Hamilton' and the historian whose book inspired it will collect the National Constitution Center's Liberty Medal this fall, an award for efforts to spread liberty around the world. Ron Chernow and ' Hamilton ' will collect the medal and its $100,000 cash prize at an event in October on Philadelphia's Independence Mall. Award organizers credited the book and musical for having a 'singular impact' by bringing to life and spreading the story of the U.S. Constitution and Alexander Hamilton, a pivotal figure in drafting and promoting the governing document. He was also the first U.S. treasury secretary. 'Hamilton,' which debuted on Broadway a decade ago, has become a cultural touchstone, winning the Pulitzer Prize, a Grammy and 11 Tony awards. Lin-Manuel Miranda, who created the musical, called the award a deep honor. 'The Constitution is not just a historical artifact — it's a challenge. A call to participate. To speak up, to imagine better, and to work, every day, toward that more perfect union,' he said in a statement released before the formal announcement. Chernow's many books have included biographies of former presidents George Washington and Ulysses S. Grant and, more recently, of writer and humoristMark Twain. 'In writing about Hamilton, Washington, and Grant, I've come to see that liberty is not a gift passed down through generations — it's a responsibility,' Chernow said in a statement. 'One that demands courage, compromise, and commitment. These men were imperfect, but they dared to envision something greater than themselves.' The Liberty Medal was established in 1988 to honor the 200th anniversary of the U.S. Constitution's 1787 signing. Recent winners have included the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and PBS documentary filmmaker Ken Burns. © Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
30-06-2025
- Entertainment
Musical 'Hamilton' and historian Ron Chernow to receive Liberty Medal awards
PHILADELPHIA -- The Broadway musical 'Hamilton' and the historian whose book inspired it will collect the National Constitution Center's Liberty Medal this fall, an award for efforts to spread liberty around the world. Ron Chernow and ' Hamilton ' will collect the medal and its $100,000 cash prize at an event in October on Philadelphia's Independence Mall. Award organizers credited the book and musical for having a 'singular impact' by bringing to life and spreading the story of the U.S. Constitution and Alexander Hamilton, a pivotal figure in drafting and promoting the governing document. He was also the first U.S. treasury secretary. 'Hamilton,' which debuted on Broadway a decade ago, has become a cultural touchstone, winning the Pulitzer Prize, a Grammy and 11 Tony awards. Lin-Manuel Miranda, who created the musical, called the award a deep honor. 'The Constitution is not just a historical artifact — it's a challenge. A call to participate. To speak up, to imagine better, and to work, every day, toward that more perfect union,' he said in a statement released before the formal announcement. Chernow's many books have included biographies of former presidents George Washington and Ulysses S. Grant and, more recently, of writer and humorist Mark Twain. 'In writing about Hamilton, Washington, and Grant, I've come to see that liberty is not a gift passed down through generations — it's a responsibility,' Chernow said in a statement. 'One that demands courage, compromise, and commitment. These men were imperfect, but they dared to envision something greater than themselves.' The Liberty Medal was established in 1988 to honor the 200th anniversary of the U.S. Constitution's 1787 signing. Recent winners have included the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and PBS documentary filmmaker Ken Burns.
Winnipeg Free Press
30-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Winnipeg Free Press
Musical ‘Hamilton' and historian Ron Chernow to receive Liberty Medal awards
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — The Broadway musical 'Hamilton' and the historian whose book inspired it will collect the National Constitution Center's Liberty Medal this fall, an award for efforts to spread liberty around the world. Ron Chernow and ' Hamilton ' will collect the medal and its $100,000 cash prize at an event in October on Philadelphia's Independence Mall. Award organizers credited the book and musical for having a 'singular impact' by bringing to life and spreading the story of the U.S. Constitution and Alexander Hamilton, a pivotal figure in drafting and promoting the governing document. He was also the first U.S. treasury secretary. 'Hamilton,' which debuted on Broadway a decade ago, has become a cultural touchstone, winning the Pulitzer Prize, a Grammy and 11 Tony awards. Lin-Manuel Miranda, who created the musical, called the award a deep honor. 'The Constitution is not just a historical artifact — it's a challenge. A call to participate. To speak up, to imagine better, and to work, every day, toward that more perfect union,' he said in a statement released before the formal announcement. Chernow's many books have included biographies of former presidents George Washington and Ulysses S. Grant and, more recently, of writer and humorist Mark Twain. 'In writing about Hamilton, Washington, and Grant, I've come to see that liberty is not a gift passed down through generations — it's a responsibility,' Chernow said in a statement. 'One that demands courage, compromise, and commitment. These men were imperfect, but they dared to envision something greater than themselves.' The Liberty Medal was established in 1988 to honor the 200th anniversary of the U.S. Constitution's 1787 signing. Recent winners have included the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and PBS documentary filmmaker Ken Burns.
